Module 2: Why OERs?
In the previous module you were introduced to open education resources. In this module, you will learn about the benefits of using OER to faculty and students.
By the end of this module, you should be able to:
Articulate motivations for OER adoptions and use
Describe the benefits of OER for faculty
Describe the benefits of OER for students
Explore further benefits OER supports, such as equity and inclusion
Why Use OER?
OER supports a future where students and instructors have free access to a wide variety of high-quality educational resources that have been collaboratively developed, reviewed, revised, and shared across institutions. A future where educational resources can be easily adapted to fit within the context of specific courses, and to meet the needs of specific students. A future where the cost of creation, use, and maintenance is much lower than the current rising costs of textbooks and other classroom resources.
SPARC summarizes the why behind using OER with these four points:
Textbook costs should not be a barrier to education
Students learn more when they have access to quality materials
Technology holds boundless potential to improve teaching and learning
Better education means a better future
Watch the video Why OER below to learn more.
Benefits
The following are just some of the benefits of using OER for both faculty and students.
Students: Cost Savings
Using OER can both provide tremendous cost savings for students and impact student success and completion rates. The cost of textbooks can be a huge financial burden on students, which not only affects student success, but could also delay graduation for students who are taking fewer classes per term because of that cost, further increasing financial costs for students over time.
Research from Jhangiani & Jhangiani, 2017 shows the impact of textbook costs on students in B.C.
54% of students had not purchased at least one required textbook
27% had take fewer courses due to textbook costs
26% had withdrawn from a course due to textbook costs
30% earned lower grades
Students: Improved Learning Outcomes
OER provide students with day-one access to free course materials, and research reviewed by the Open Education Group shows that most students perform as well or better using OER course materials compared with students using traditional textbooks.
“When faculty use OER, we aren’t just saving students money on textbooks: we are directly impacting that students’ ability to enroll in, persist through, and successfully complete a course.” ~ Jhangiani & DeRosa, 2017
The Florida Virtual Campus’ 2016 and 2018 Student Textbook and Course Materials Survey demonstrates that the cost of commercial textbooks continues to negatively impact student access, success, and completion.
Faculty: Freedom & Empowerment
Faculty using OER enjoy great freedom in selecting course materials that they can customize to fit the needs of their students and their teaching goals. Since most OER permit adaptation, educators are free to edit, reorder, delete, or remix OER materials. OER provide clearly defined rights to users.
Faculty: Collaboration
The open community is a wonderful place to share and communicate with others. It allows for peer reviews and collaborations within and across disciplines. If you would like to learn more check out "How to Connect" from the Learning Portal OER Toolkit .
Equity & Open
When discussing open educational resources and exploring their use and benefits, it is important to remember that access and equity are not the same. The video below, Why Open Education Matters explores how equity intersects with open education.
While OER can help with the challenge of access to relevant educational resources, it is important to consider that not everyone has access to technology. As well, there are other challenges related to equity in open educational resources. While open educational resources and open practices present opportunities to create and share diverse and inclusive resources, inequities in OER exist. For example, the open community is lacking in diverse voices who author OER. There also are known difficulties finding openly licensed content that is culturally relevant and inclusive. Representation matters and there is work to do in this area!
The Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources (CCCOER) has collected resources and articles exploring OER through the lens of equity, diversity, and inclusion. These resources are included (and continue to expand) on their Equity & Openness blog.
As you learn more about OER, consider how open education practices and the use of OER can enhance your own teaching practices and learning materials to become (more) equitable, diverse, and inclusive.
...OER provide a unique opportunity for educators to access learning materials, and then tailor them to the specific needs of their classroom. This is particularly important for teaching diverse groups of students. Where culturally-responsive curriculum redesign must include funding to print textbooks that often fail to reflect student diversity and quickly become outdated, OER could instead be used to give students access to high-quality learning materials that educators could then continue to adapt as understandings of student needs and identities change. ~ Prescott, S., Muñiz, J. & Ishmael, K., 2018
Value of Open in a Time of Crisis
In early 2020 the world experienced a public health pandemic. Globally, researchers frantically turned to data, research, and reports to better understand the novel coronavirus and find a vaccine. In many cases research existed behind paywalls making critical scientific data and research inaccessible or unaffordable to researchers. Members of the scientific community responded by sharing their pre-print publications and datasets online (often via Twitter). Individuals used such hashtags as #preprint, #openaccess, #openscience #opendata, and #covid19 to share their research openly. Other examples of communities sharing research and data during this crisis include the VODAN Network (Virus Outbreak Datanetwork), ASAPbio, and the WHO’s global research on COVID-19 database.
As the impact of the pandemic grew, schools around the world closed their campuses. Institutions rushed to transition to remote learning and services in a matter of weeks. For students who previously relied on college and university libraries for access to physical copies of commercial textbooks (in collections or on course reserve), this access was no longer was available. As well, students studying abroad were experiencing difficulties getting access to the resources they needed whether physical or digital. Libraries responded by reaching out to faculty and students to connect them to freely available open educational resources or library-licensed content.
Publishers offered access to e-books, but this adds to the financial burden for students, many of whom lost their jobs or were unable to work during the pandemic. A transition to open educational resources and a commitment to making open the default for research and education, provides students with access to online course materials which are always free and affordable.
Activity: Knowledge Check
Additional Resources
Faculty OER Toolkit, by Shannon Moist, BC Campus is licensed under CC BY 4.0
Carpenter, F., Davis, W.P. & Sicre, D. (2017, November 15) How OER can Support Student Equity and Diversity. CCCOER Webinar.
Colvard, N., Watson, C. & Park, H. (2018) The Impact of Open Educational Resources on Student Success Metrics. International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, 30 (2), 262-276.
Grimaldi, P., Basu Mallick D., Waters A., Baraniuk, R. (2019, March 6) Do open educational resources improve student learning? Implications of the access hypothesis. PLOS|One
Hilton, J. (2016) Open educational resources and college textbook choices: a review of research on efficacy and perceptions. Education Tech Research and Development, 64(4), 573 – 590.
This video synthesizes the research results discussed in John Hilton’s article above, A Review of the Effectiveness & Perceptions of Open Educational Resources As Compared to Textbooks
Attributions
Information for this module was consulted and adapted from:
"An Introduction to Open Educational Resources" by Abbey Elder is licensed under CC BY 4.0
"Leveraging the Benefits of OER" in Welcome to Understanding OER by SUNY OER Services is licensed under CC BY 4.0
"Open Education" by SPARC is licensed under CC BY 4.0
Understanding OER. by SUNY OER Services. in OER Community Course. CC BY: Attribution
"Why Open Education?" by CCCOER is licensed under CC BY 4.0
Investigating the Perceptions, Use, and Impact of Open Textbooks: A survey of Post-Secondary Students in British Columbia by Rajiv Jhangiani and Surita Jhangiani is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.